SfD 2023: Petty exclusions and dubious invitees USAID and “democratic bright spots”

There are few occasions more revolting to one’s political sensibilities in this age of vastly enhanced incredulity than the spectacle of an elaborate geopolitical ploy, couched in the language of lofty pro-democracy sentiments, intruding on one’s notice with its wanton pretence. The second edition of the Summit for Democracy, held last week on 29-30 March, was, in its essence, such a gathering. It is therefore with a cynicism so transparently unambiguous as to be virtually innocent that its evaluation may be attempted.

Organised as a combination of virtual and in-person events across two days, excluding 28 March, the unofficial kick-off date, the second Summit was an improvement on the inaugural in terms of its scale: the co-hosts - Costa Rica, Netherlands, Republic of Korea, and Zambia – in addition to the principal protagonist and string-puller – the US – gave the convocation the superficial appearance of worldwide reach and inclusiveness, fortifying an affected sense of purpose centred around the main agenda items – espousing democracies and challenging authoritarian trends across the globe.

Yet the beneath the visible and carefully designed exterior, there was a clearly discernible foreign policy doctrine for the perpetuation of which the subject of democracy itself appeared to be a mere decoy, or, at best, a mode of achieving the most vital of grand objectives – confronting China’s growing ambitions and consolidating the world against Russia’s war in Ukraine. For US President Jo Biden himself, this was not a simple showcase, but the global projection of his domestic policy, the genus of the Summit having originated in his 2020 election manifesto, being thereafter incorporated in the realm of foreign affairs. It is not that the whole idea looked hideously misconceived. In fact, it looked quite the reverse, as it had its own finesse and elaborate reasoning. However, the gaping pitfall it failed to mend was that its decoy was too easily penetrable.

That the magnitude of the pretence was only thinly veiled by the force of the declarative intent has not gone unnoticed, even by those who believe the US agenda of “renewing democracy at home and confronting autocracies abroad” has its own strong, albeit self-serving, moral component. In many ways, the summit combined two exigencies; forming an anti-Sino-Russian club for greater geopolitical considerations and reprimanding a group of perceived democratic backsliders, the real cause of whose snubbing - if being left out of the list of invitees may be regarded as such - could be found in their respective foreign policy choices.

Invitees and the question of democracy

The question as to “what democracy actually is” is quite often propounded by apologists for autocracies or deeply illiberal regimes for the sake of blurring the issue and trying to find excuses for crackdowns on civil liberties. On the other hand, those advocating the idea of the exportation of their relative concept of “democracy” to a wide range of countries seem to feel a moral entitlement to decide on the matter arbitrarily, with full confidence that their interpretation should prevail.

Bernard Lewis, an eminent British historian, for instance, had a very Anglo-centric view of the subject.“Democracy, or what we call democracy nowadays, is the parochial custom of the English-speaking peoples for the conduct of their public affairs, which may or may not be suitable for others,” emphatically noted the don of Oriental studies who was often regarded as “the West’s leading interpreter of the Middle East”, in an interview with the Jerusalem Post, in 2002.  Of course, Lewis did not mean that democracy was not the most desirable and best form of government. Neither did he mean that France or Italy was not democratic, for instance. What he effectively meant was that the “democracy” referred to in the Anglosphere is largely the product of its collective history, and the idea of imposing this on other nations could be too precipitated and even counterproductive.

The French would find Lewis too enamoured with the English exclusivity and contend otherwise. But this point is one of different nature. It is about the perversity of the US-initiated Summit from the prism of the cause of democracy itself.  Firstly, it seeks, despite pretending otherwise, to redefine the concept itself unilaterally. Secondly, by inviting states that, by any conceivable measure, fall way down on the basic democratic credentials, it gives rise to public cynicism in relation to the values of so-called “democracy”. Thirdly, this is done for the sake of geopolitical considerations, undermining the Summit’s contrived message.

As was the case with the inaugural summit, held in December 2021, the second edition was attended by a great many nations with a highly questionable rectitude in the department of democracy, with the list of invitees including Iraq, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo, all of which are rated as “not free” by Freedom House. Iraq represents a cautionary tale on how the imposition of a concept of “democracy” from outside is capable of panning out in a gruesome way: the central government in Baghdad remains overly repressive, corruption is commonplace and increasingly rife, with civil liberties being luxuries of a phantasmagorical future that may never come for this nation. Angola is equally repressive, if not more so, whereas Congolese democracy is not even needed at present, for the central government is paralysed due to continuous armed conflicts, and the need for competent governance of any kind, however undemocratic, is felt more keenly than injecting a foreign concept of civil liberties.

What also considerably weakened the values the organisers of the Summit claimed to seek to uphold are the arbitrary exclusions in relation to Türkiye and Hungary, and the inclusion of a massive renegade in the shape of India, where an opposition leader has recently been disqualified from being a Member of Parliament. It may be assumed that, for the guise of Washington, these three nations may be deemed “illiberal”, with their leaders displaying “strongman instincts at the expense of freedoms”. Here, the decision to invite India seems to hinge on it being perceived as a bulwark against China, whereas Turkiye and Hungary could have been deemed insufficiently cooperative in confronting Russia’s aggressive war in Ukraine, despite Ankara’s increasingly critical role in managing the crisis via the employment of its mediatory prowess.

In its defence, the US administration claims the summit was not a convocation of democracies, but a forum for democracy, and the rigid division into two was manifestly unintentional. Since the underlying intention of uniting the world’s democracies against autocracies in light of Chinese economic expansionism and Russia’s war in Ukraine is central to the core of the gathering, the exclusions seem to have a distinct flair of punitiveness, with problematic inclusions eliciting US geopolitics as its most naked manifestation.

“Democratic bright spots”

Although the selection of invitees remains far from being guided by clear principles on true merits, there is a new concept named a “democratic bright spot”, which could partially explain the presence of some of the highly questionable participants with serious endemic democratic deficiencies. Introduced by Samantha Power, the administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), back in June 2022, the new term purports to define a range of countries that have recently experienced democratic momentum or a democratic opening and are therefore worthy of special attention and support by Washington.

A recent Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report, published just two days before the official opening of the summit, on 27 March, entitled “Understanding and Supporting Democratic Bright Spots” offers a fairly lucid explanation of what could be meant by the notion in question.

The concept, as envisioned by the co-authors, seems to be based on the view that extracts a certain utility from the political change of definable properties. To qualify for the status of a bright little spot, a given nation needs to be at a certain political juncture that could be the result of four separate scenarios. Firstly, a conducive juncture may be created by means of citizen mobilisation ousting a “democratically challenged” leader in the midst of their term.

Secondly, such a juncture could be given rise to by virtue of a promising authoritarian succession opening the door to democratic progress within the framework of regime continuity. Thirdly, if the leader in power attempts to extend their term and fails to do so due to the countervailing efforts of institutions or mass mobilisation, such momentum could be regarded as having been created. The fourth option suggests a scenario whereby in a democratically stagnant country a leader loses power in pivotal elections and gives way to a new political force.

Although it is perfectly possible to envision progress via the four distinct types of scenarios leading to the emergence of “democratic bright spots”, it is also clear that the typology conceives any continuity of a governing power for an extensive time period as a sign of “democratic backsliding”, and any form of change, even one within an authoritarian succession, as potentially promising.

Out of 32 countries referred to as “democratic bright spots”in the recent report, eight were, in fact, arguably recognised as such by the US administration, when Samantha Power and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken invited senior representatives from Armenia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Malawi, Moldova, Nepal, Tanzania, and Zambia to discuss methods of enhancing their democratic credentials.

USAID: Armenia and Azerbaijan

USAID’s role is one of criticality and it reflects the US vision to shape the world around its own image, in myriad ways, including connecting private philanthropies and businesses to a bright spot government and increasing direct US aid in the framework of targeted democracy assistance. It should also not be forgotten that the role of USAID and that of other US agencies is not envisioned as being circumscribed to helping existing “democratic bright spots”, but to contribute to their emergence via the aid and funding aimed at bringing political change in countries which, for the US, may appear as “democratically challenged”.

In this respect, it is not too difficult to understand why Armenia, which experienced a change in 2018, is viewed as being worthy of an invitation to the Summit of Democracy, and the steps taken by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, leading to “executive aggrandisement” -  the consolidation of power in the hands of the office of the Prime Minister – were deemed as permissible, and not as encroaching on democracy, although that was the case in reality.

Geopolitically, Armenia’s inclusion in the list also seems to be connected with the momentum of a different kind. Its leadership’s escalating dissolution with Moscow and faint, yet reignited, hopes of breaking free of the Kremlin’s dominance, in light of the latter’s growing challenges in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, present the US with an opportunity to lure Yerevan more demonstratively into its anti-Russian coalition.

The self-same reasons substantiating Armenia’s participation at the Summit for Democracy is the possible justification for the absence of Azerbaijan, which has enjoyed political continuity and an unprecedented level of national consolidation, following the Second Karabakh War, during which it defeated Armenia. Baku would have probably considered the designation of being categorised as a “democratic bright spot” too unseemly and derogatory, finding in its construct the meaning echoing a vastly pejorative term of the 1970s – “tin pot little African country” – which became popularised in the world of well-meaning, yet biased, British thespians.

Geopolitically, Azerbaijan’s exclusion seems to be an issue of some delicacy, for Baku presents considerably greater value to the US than Armenia, due to its occupying a critical geographical spot and being an exporter of gas resources to the EU. Azerbaijan is also the only nation in the South Caucasus which has not assisted Russia in its attempts to obviate the Western sanctions, behaving independently, unlike Armenia and even Georgia, which have had their share of complicity in clandestinely coming to the rescue of the Kremlin.

What is perhaps the most important consideration is that Azerbaijan, despite having its own contentious issues with Russia over the conduct of the latter’s so-called “peacekeeping contingent” in Karabakh, is judicious enough not to be dragged into a great West-Russian confrontation, which would ultimately be at the expense of its interests. Baku’s foreign policy sensibilities may be at the root of some of the reasons justifying its absence at the Summit.

More friction and the lack of resolute unity

Back to the second edition of the Summit, out of 120 invitees, only 73 initially endorsed the final declaration, which, inter alia, entailed the point of “calling out Russia for its invasion of Ukraine”, with 12 nations, including India, Israel and the Philippines, opting out of a part backing accountability for human rights abuses and acknowledging the importance of the International Criminal Court ruling. The decision of some countries not to lend their signatures to the Russia-related part of the final document is indicative of the summit’s failure to present a resolutely united front on the matters of principle for the US and its allies.

The rationale for Brazil’s reservations to this effect, as explained by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, was the unsuitability of the Summit for Democracy for such decisions. Mexico behaved in a like fashion, giving rise to the assumption that the Global South, despite being aghast at President Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine, is increasingly alienated from Washington’s sense of urgency.

That “democracy”, on the whole, has been backsliding across the world could be a meritorious judgement, whereas Biden’s pretence that all is attributable to the influence exerted by China and Russia falls short of being overwhelmingly convincing. The crisis of governance in the US witnessed during the Trump administration, for instance, was largely connected with the failure of American democracy to deliver for the people, mistrust in the political classes, and the renewed promise by Biden to restore confidence is an internal US affair, conditioned by its intramural paradigms.

“The highest level of democratic discontent on record” – the global rise in the share of individuals claiming being “dissatisfied” with democracy from 47.9% to 57.5%, according to a study by the University of Cambridge, based on data obtained from 4 million people across 154 countries – points to the struggle of Western democracies, not the vile influence of China or Russia, whose global reach in exporting governance models remains limited.

The Summit, ultimately, achieved nothing measurably tangible apart from burnishing Biden’s own Dorian Gray-like image, effectively externalising US internal dynamics on a global scale, amounting to a partisan affair and "crossing beyond the water's edge". The administration in Washington alienated some of its allies and boosted the credibility of certain dubious leaders.

On the positive side, it presented the world’s commentators with a chance to gauge the true extent of the difficulties in rallying the world against China and Russia, with the reservations expressed in the Summit's declaration indicating the lack of a uniform front. As Neil Watson, British Journalist, commented: “This Summit was doomed to failure. It represents American naval-gazing of the highest order and can only be viewed as Godlike American trying to shape receptive or vulnerable countries in its own image.”